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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Where are the fiscal conservatives?

Remember the good ol' days of peace and prosperity under President Clinton and President-elect Gore? The left America with a budget surplus which eventually got passed onto governor Bush. The national debt was $5 trillion and the tide of wasteful supply-side economics was being turned back after 12 years of disaster economics.

Then Bush was appointed to office despite losing the popular and electoral vote. Not to fear, we had economic conservatives like Tiahrt, Brownback and Roberts ready to undue the "tax and spend" liberals who were destroying the economy. Well, if you take Greenspan's view destroying the economy means budget surpluses, higher wages and low unemployment.

Eight years later Bush promises to leave us with nearly an $800 billion budget deficit taking the national debt over $10 trillion dollars. Yup, Bush and the economic conservatives managed to create a larger debt than Bush Sr. and Reagan combined.

Tax and spend liberals got replaced with borrow and spend conservatives. Our nation's infrastructure falls apart and the conservatives solution is to privatize the commons. Need road repair? Simple, sell your roads to Spain and pay a toll the moment you step out of your driveway. Why have a public water system that has provided clean, inexpensive water? Simply sell it through a no-bid contract to a company that donates heavily to the Republican party and have your rates increase as CEOs skim 20% off the top for profits. Folks like McCain demand we privatize social security although he doesn't advocate that position ever since the stock market went back to 2000 levels (you know, when Clinton left office and Bush took over).

So what does Tiahrt propose to turn back his years of economic failure? Nothing new, the usual, tax cuts, removing tariffs, and keeping consumers from suing businesses that taint their products with toxins. Just the same crap that Republicans have been pushing that helped us get into this problem.

Huge tax cuts for the rich and corporations have only put more tax burden on the working people. To deal with tax shortfalls the country borrows more money from Saudi Arabia and China so we can pay back that money with interest. Tiahrt wants to cut more taxes and borrow more so we can have larger budget deficits.

Tiahrt wants to reduce trade barriers so we can send more jobs overseas. Tariffs keep jobs in America, but Tiahrt wants to tax labor rather than tax consumption. Does it make sense that a tv in America should cost as much as one made in China? Nope. Increasing tariffs means imported electronics will cost the same as ones made in America but your purchase of an American television will mean the money and jobs stay in America. As it is if we make a car in America and send it to China we pay a 20% tariff. But if a car is made in China and sent to America they pay a 2% tariff. No wonder so many jobs are sent overseas, but Tiahrt wants more of that.

And lastly, Tiahrt's call to end "frivolous lawsuits". One example of a frivolous lawsuit is the people in Alaska whose lives were ruined by Exxon's massive oil spill. They fought for years in court, all the way to the Supreme Court for compensation. Some people didn't even live that long to see the culmination. The end result was the Supreme Court reduced the damages Exxon had to pay to the equivalent of a couple weeks profit, $507 million. When Tiahrt refers to justices "legislating from the bench" he solely means those justices who decide in the favor of the people, not the corporations.

Senator Betts offers real solutions to deal with the economic problems. Increase regulations to prevent things like the banking disasters (Tiahrt voted for the deregulation which led to the problem), increase barriers to protect American jobs which will also bring in more revenue to reduce the deficit, and eliminate the cost Iraq occupation which Tiahrt supports.

Republicans like Tiahrt have made being a fiscal conservative more like a child who inherits his grandparents mansion and millions of dollars to simply blow the money on liquor and whores and never once maintain the upkeep of the mansion, leaving that to his own grandkids.

No, the best thing is to be called an economic liberal since it leads to prosperity. Since Tiahrt is a Christian and constantly reminds everyone of that fact let's turn to his Bible and what it says about liberals:

"The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful. For the vile person will speak villainy, and his heart will work iniquity, to practice hypocrisy, and to utter error against the Lord, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail. The instruments of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speak right. But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand." (Isaiah 32:5-8 KJV)